What a mess!

At 7:50 AM today the pool people came with earthshaking (literally) equipment. They dumped gravel in the street, making it difficult for neighbors to exit our street. The Bobcat then takes the gravel from the street and brings it to the pool to back fill. They fill in the 4ft.deep, 3ft. wide areas around the pool. This is where the concrete will go when they come back next week.
Because we've had no rain, the powdery dirt flies through the air in clouds of dust traveling to cover all vehicles on half the street. Our new truck, van, and cars are now all brown. I feel very bad for ruining our neighbor's early Saturday morning and now their afternoons as they have to clean off their cars, patio furniture, driveways and anything else the dusty dirt has settled on. I wish I could make it up to them. Even the workers said they haven't seen anything like it. I guess it's due to our poor soil and no rain.

"before"&"in progress"-more pic added

A Little Boy's Dream...Back hoes, Bobcats, and large mounds of dirt to climb on!

"Mamma Meatballs!"

As many of you know, the wind storm on Sunday changed our comfort zone when we lost power for 50 hours. I had plenty of candles to light, thanks to Rachel and Jason's wedding in 2006, and my love for Yankee Candles. The problem for me was no coffee, no cable, no computer and no toast! Rachel invited Becca and I over for morning coffee and phone charging time since they had electricity.

Even though we packed ice chests and beverage coolers with food from our 2 refrigerators and big freezer, we still had to throw out plenty of food. We cooked the meat that had thawed on our grill to server at a later date but I had to do something with 3 1/2 pounds of ground veal. I was having a difficult time finding it in at the store to make my meatballs with and once Kroger had it in stock, I bought 4 packs of it. Today I had to buy beef and pork to mix with it to make meatballs. That's 9 pounds of meat and 18 eggs. It took me 2 1/2 hours to make 154 meatballs today. (I ate 5 of them)

Here are the treasured meatballs in the making. I was able to use fresh basil from my garden. Next time you come for dinner, guess what I'll be serving!

Anticipation of Fall

Yesterday I decorated the house for Fall. The only thing missing are the scents of spiced pumpkin and Macintosh apples. My trip to Yankee Candle and Bath and Bodyworks will take care of that!

Soon I'll be making some food to welcome the new season. Foods like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, beef stew, meatloaf and baked potatoes, soups (my signature soup this year is my Beer Cheese Soup). I think French Onion will be added to my soup line as well.

Later this month Tom is taking me on a "getaway" to a beach in Florida. We usually go to a cabin in the woods in Hocking Hills, OH but this year he surprised me with a beach vacation. I think he saw depressed I was to leave the beach this summer after a only a week. Hopefully no hurricanes will mess things up.